O Canada! Help me understand your CPS world!

AK Dad

New member
So I've been sitting here trying to digest the awesome, outstanding, great, can't say enough good things about it, testing that Transport Canada did back in 2009 ...

http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/roadsafety/...rograms-regulations-research-research-887.htm

... and at the same time trying to understand why the disparity in weight limits between otherwise identical (as far as I can tell) CRs between the US and Canada.

For instance, their in-car testing of boosters has very much strengthened my belief that HWH seats, like the Frontier, do a much better job of protecting kids in severe crashes. So why is it that the Frontier that's about to show up at my door this afternoon is good to 90 lbs here in Alaska, but if I drive south :)D) across the border, it's suddenly only good to 65 lbs? Also, if I were to drive across (assuming my kid weighed 66 lbs) would I be required to stow the harness straps and use it as a HBB?

Same question for the (Canadian-made) Foonf - why is it good here to 50lbs RF'd, but the same seat across the border is only good to 40lbs?

So what's the answer? Is TC's research just way ahead of the regulations? Are the US standards not as strict as Canada's and we're putting our kids in harm's way?

Anyway, I'm just wondering what my Canadian friends think. Are you annoyed that you can't get a Frontier 90 in Canada the way I'm annoyed that I can't (legally) get a Multi-Tech in the US?
 
ADS

Pixelated

Moderator - CPST Instructor
For instance, their in-car testing of boosters has very much strengthened my belief that HWH seats, like the Frontier, do a much better job of protecting kids in severe crashes. So why is it that the Frontier that's about to show up at my door this afternoon is good to 90 lbs here in Alaska, but if I drive south :)D) across the border, it's suddenly only good to 65 lbs? Also, if I were to drive across (assuming my kid weighed 66 lbs) would I be required to stow the harness straps and use it as a HBB?

I don't know that the Frontier specifically is structurally identical. Some seats appear to be, others are definitely not. I know Canada requires more foam or head deflection material in the head area than the US does. The Nautilus I *think* is a good example where if you peeled back the cover on a US and Canadian one you'd find more padding on ours.

Now if you drove in YOUR car into Canada, and again depending on province or territory, you wouldn't have to stop using your Frontier at 66lbs and convert it to booster mode, as you're legally and properly using an American seat in an American-plated vehicle and most places have an exemption for visitors. So no road-side pit stops for you to tuck the harness away (which should be easy peasy anyway in the 90 right?!)

Same question for the (Canadian-made) Foonf - why is it good here to 50lbs RF'd, but the same seat across the border is only good to 40lbs?

The weight limit change is all about our new (Jan 1 2012 new) anti-rebound standard. Imagine a line drawn on the test bench from somewhere in the seat bight (I'll dig up the schematic if you want me to) vertically to the ceiling. Upon rebound the head of a rear facing dummy can't cross that line. Upon certification Clek questioned the way the standard was written, and got some clarification from Transport Canada that resulted in an answer no one was too keen to hear. Foonf passes the rebound with a 50lb 3 year old dummy (which is a weighted dummy, a 'child' that size doesn't exist in the dummy family), but didn't pass the rebound with the taller 6 year old 50ish lb dummy. That extra height AT THAT WEIGHT made it fail the rebound (but Clek reports that it passed everything else). That too is why the standing height limit is 43", because that is the height of the biggest dummy they could test with. I can dig up those dummy specs if you'd like. Many details and comments on this thread, which is several pages long (have fun!): http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=232873&highlight=foonf+anti-rebound

Some seats use an ARB to pass the rebound standard, but most use structural changes to the front edge of the seat. Google a pic of your Alpha Omega and compare it to ours, and same for Evenflo seats, the MyRide, and others. Infant seats now most often require the handle up like a roll bar, or in the position by the baby's feet to accomplish the same thing. Babiesrus.com versus .ca would be an easy way to see it.

Our Peg infant/child (convertible) seat comes with an ARB and yours does not, much to the dismay of many here.

Seats can not use a RF tether to pass the standard.


So what's the answer? Is TC's research just way ahead of the regulations? Are the US standards not as strict as Canada's and we're putting our kids in harm's way?

Transport Canada's standards are different. I don't know if they're safer. Is preventing rebound always a good thing? Many techs like anti-rebound management but parents mostly don't think about it. I think most would agree that more padding in the head area is likely good. We also require top tethering for all forward-facing seats, and most would argue that's safer.


Anyway, I'm just wondering what my Canadian friends think. Are you annoyed that you can't get a Frontier 90 in Canada the way I'm annoyed that I can't (legally) get a Multi-Tech in the US?

For the most part no. Only once have I had a child at a check who maxed our the 65lb weight limit on a seat that I would have preferred to keep harnessed for longer, but whether it's a case of our kids generally being lighter than American kids or what our standards top out at 65lbs. It was only a few years ago (2007) that they were upped from 48lbs to 65lbs. If the obesity trends continue though we may find more and more kids needing that higher weight and then who knows what will happen, eh?
 

bbartlettnfld

New member
Transport Canada's Definition of a child is someone weighing less than 65lbs and I can't remember the height right now. I don't think the US has a weight limit on their definition of a child- thus in the USA weight limits can be much higher.

We have had some CDN seats here with higher weight limits than the USA. The Evenflo seats here a few years ago were 47lbs here in Canada but 40lbs in the USA..

It makes no sense! Kinda like why carseats are so much more expensive here compared to the USA.
 

AK Dad

New member
Now if you drove in YOUR car into Canada, and again depending on province or territory, you wouldn't have to stop using your Frontier at 66lbs and convert it to booster mode, as you're legally and properly using an American seat in an American-plated vehicle and most places have an exemption for visitors.

That's good to know also. I guess the real question is does Canada "know something" that we don't about crash performance, or is it just the result of different regulatory structures.

The weight limit change is all about our new (Jan 1 2012 new) anti-rebound standard.

Seats can not use a RF tether to pass the standard.

Thanks for all that background - interesting stuff! That's too bad they don't let them use RF tether - sound kind of like how the US test sled doesn't have a floor so you can't use a foot-prop to limit seat rotation. I think that sort of thing is really limiting manufacturers' ability to innovate. I don't know why that can't just do something similar to what Britax does for the HWH seats where top tether is recommended for all weights but required above 65lbs. Seems like they could do something similar for RFing, like "RFing tether recommended at all weights, but required from 40-50lbs"

Transport Canada's Definition of a child is someone weighing less than 65lbs and I can't remember the height right now. I don't think the US has a weight limit on their definition of a child- thus in the USA weight limits can be much higher.

That is a very good point that I hadn't even thought of!
 

snowbird25ca

Moderator - CPST Instructor
Transport Canada's Definition of a child is someone weighing less than 65lbs and I can't remember the height right now. I don't think the US has a weight limit on their definition of a child- thus in the USA weight limits can be much higher.

We have had some CDN seats here with higher weight limits than the USA. The Evenflo seats here a few years ago were 47lbs here in Canada but 40lbs in the USA..

I actually have a possible answer to the 40 and 47lbs difference between Canada and the US on those seats... more force is put on the harness slots when a seat is used untethered. I would guess that that's the reason for the weight difference... it's long been thought that it was due to head excursion - and that could be part of it too. But I'm betting that seat integrity is a consideration as well.
 

snowbird25ca

Moderator - CPST Instructor
I think overall, the difference between 65 and 80 or 85 or 90lbs affects a very very small percent of Canadian children. Though I did recently have to recommend a parent buy a booster for a 3.5yr old child who was 65lbs. (Yes, definitely correct weight unfortunately.) That is the first kid I've seen of that weight at that age in the almost 6yrs and hundreds of families that I've seen and helped though, to give an idea of how common it is, and she was immigrating in to Canada with her mom from a culture that feeds kids for everything.)

I am a big believer in anti-rebound control and have always preferred seats with anti-rebound bars. Given that some vehicle manufacturers don't allow rf tethering, I wouldn't be happy if a seat relied on rf tethering to pass anti-rebound standards as that information is not found in a vehicle manual.

Do Canadian standards create restrictions in how innovative a manufacturer can be? Well, they definitely do influence manufacturers. But based on my current knowledge, I don't think those restrictions have an affect overall on what we have for seats. I would rather use a seat that is tested to stricter standards with slightly lower limits. To be honest, I sometimes wonder if the increasing weight limits on ff'ing seats in the US - on an overall level, are more to be competitive than because people are actually using the seat to those limits. It seems to me over the years that it has been a progressive competition of increased weight limits. I'm not sure that that competition is really a good thing.

I know that some seats available in the US simply don't pass Canadian standards, and that they fail in a near spectacular way if tested to Canadian standards. I'm personally glad that those seats aren't available here. Whether that means that they're actually dangerous - I don't have an answer for you. But I can tell you that I wouldn't use a seat that I knew couldn't pass Canadian standards. (Although the seat I'm thinking of is thought pretty poorly of in the US too.)

I would say, one of the most interesting things in the CPS world in Canada, is the amount of power Transport Canada truly has when it comes to manufacturers, vs the amount of power they are meant to have. NHTSA has teeth that it can bare at manufacturers - but from what I've seen, they don't use those teeth very often. The political things that go on within TC strike me as very different compared to the US and I don't think that that's a good thing overall. What I can't tell you is how much of that situation is passed down to the end product that parents see in stores.
 

Brigala

CPST Instructor
I actually have a possible answer to the 40 and 47lbs difference between Canada and the US on those seats... more force is put on the harness slots when a seat is used untethered. I would guess that that's the reason for the weight difference... it's long been thought that it was due to head excursion - and that could be part of it too. But I'm betting that seat integrity is a consideration as well.

That's a good point. And on a directly related note, all car seats in the US are required to pass testing without the top tether; I presume that's not the case in Canada. So a seat that only passes crash testing over 40 lbs IF the top tether is in use may get a higher weight limit in Canada where they don't have that testing limitation. Britax chooses to get around it in the US by requiring the TT use over a certain weight, but most manufacturers just place the limit based on the required US testing.
 

joolsplus3

Admin - CPS Technician
I am a big believer in anti-rebound control and have always preferred seats with anti-rebound bars. Given that some vehicle manufacturers don't allow rf tethering, I wouldn't be happy if a seat relied on rf tethering to pass anti-rebound standards as that information is not found in a vehicle manual.

This is true. As cars get more and more advanced, with electronics under front seats and the nicety of bars/legs/anchor points of any kind not being exposed under front seats, tethering gets more or less impossible. Way better to have seats evolve like the ones Pixelated mentioned to manage rebound.
 

AK Dad

New member
I am a big believer in anti-rebound control and have always preferred seats with anti-rebound bars. Given that some vehicle manufacturers don't allow rf tethering, I wouldn't be happy if a seat relied on rf tethering to pass anti-rebound standards as that information is not found in a vehicle manual.

This is true. As cars get more and more advanced, with electronics under front seats and the nicety of bars/legs/anchor points of any kind not being exposed under front seats, tethering gets more or less impossible. Way better to have seats evolve like the ones Pixelated mentioned to manage rebound.

Yep, you both have a very good point there - just because I don't think twice about pulling pieces of trim off of seat rails and "on-site engineering" a RF tether doesn't mean it's a good mass-market solution. I've actually found something interesting regarding my Britax Multi-Tech which of course does require the RFing tether. Per the manual you can either use factory installed loops in the seat rails (which of course very few north american cars have, and if they do it's probably a "world car" leftover and not mentioned in the US manual) or you can thread them thru the front seat bight. There's also nothing giving you a limit on how much tension to put on the RFing tethers, just that you have to make the indicator on the foot turn from red to green. The funny thing is there's no mention at all about the possible effects on the front airbag weight sensors due to putting too much pre-load on the front seats. For instance, in our truck with a pretty high seat in the back, I have to crank down pretty hard to compress the vehicle seat to pre-load the foot prop. I don't like the thru the seat bight thing, so I've popped off trim and wrapped the tethers around the seat rail mounting, but technically the manual doesn't discuss that as an option either.
Anyway, you're definitely right that RFing tethers are probably not the way forward ...
 

joolsplus3

Admin - CPS Technician
Volvos have those extra tether loops. Some of us have heard Volvo engineers say "of course!" they are for RF tethering, "we left them there on US cars on purpose!" and some of us have heard engineers say "No! Don't Use them for RF tethering". It's... insane.
 

Qarin

New member
I actually have a possible answer to the 40 and 47lbs difference between Canada and the US on those seats... more force is put on the harness slots when a seat is used untethered. I would guess that that's the reason for the weight difference... it's long been thought that it was due to head excursion - and that could be part of it too. But I'm betting that seat integrity is a consideration as well.

Why would there be more force on the slots when the seat is untethered- on first thought it would seem to me that there would be less as some of the energy of the deceleration would be dissipated during ride-down where the child and seatback are moving together, vs all (or, most) of the child's weight-in-deceleration being transferred to the harness slot when the seat is tethered and so doesn't move (as much) with the child (away from the car's seat).
 

snowbird25ca

Moderator - CPST Instructor
Why would there be more force on the slots when the seat is untethered- on first thought it would seem to me that there would be less as some of the energy of the deceleration would be dissipated during ride-down where the child and seatback are moving together, vs all (or, most) of the child's weight-in-deceleration being transferred to the harness slot when the seat is tethered and so doesn't move (as much) with the child (away from the car's seat).

I don't know the exact why, but I'm guessing it has to do with the force being more focused on the top of the seat as the seat pivots around the seatbelt - the hips and crotch most likely don't load in to the harness with as much force as the shoulders due to the pivoting. That's my guess.
 

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